A new publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff defines military doctrine regarding "peace operations."

Peace operations utilize "all instruments of national power with military missions to contain conflict, redress the peace, and shape the environment to support reconciliation and rebuilding and facilitate the transition to legitimate governance. Peace operations include peacekeeping, peace enforcement, peacemaking, peace building, and conflict prevention efforts."

There are 15 fundamental elements of peace operations, according to the new doctrine, including: transparency, impartiality, credibility, freedom of movement, restraint and minimum force, and so on.

Much of what is publicly known regarding the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody did not emerge from congressional investigations -- there were no such investigations -- or from other conventional means of oversight.

Instead, a large portion of the public record on interrogation policy was uncovered through an unusually effective Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A new documentary collection on detainee abuse edited by ACLU attorneys Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh has just been published by Columbia University Press under the title "Administration of Torture," with a narrative introduction by the editors.

The U.S. Government was acquiescent in Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons technology over a period of decades, according to a new book on the subject.

The activities of individual members of Pakistan's nuclear procurement network in the United States are examined in detail by investigative reporters David Armstrong and Joseph Trento in "America and the Islamic Bomb," Steerforth Press, 2007.

Richard M. Barlow, a former CIA and Defense official who attempted to "blow the whistle" on Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear technology in the 1980s, was effectively punished for his efforts.

"For his candor, and despite the backing of some top intelligence officials, Barlow was stripped of his Top Secret/Codeword clearances and hounded out of the Pentagon," wrote Jeff Stein in "The Nuclear Bombshell That Never Went Off," CQ Homeland Security, October 19: